


Chromatic Variations

by crescentheart



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Colors, Dreams, M/M, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-04
Updated: 2013-01-04
Packaged: 2017-11-23 15:59:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/623941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crescentheart/pseuds/crescentheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson lives in monochrome.<br/>The dusty and grainy kind that makes rain blend into the greyscale sky.<br/>It’s plain. It’s normal. Boring. Every moment of his consciousness is painful.<br/>John Watson dreams in brilliant, vivid color.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chromatic Variations

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys, so this is the first piece of fandom writing I've done in a while. This was created one night when I was feeling sad and lonely, so it's written almost like prose. I recommend you read it slowly because each piece of description has a meaning and distinct image. Lots of love go to [Jana](http://queenamys.tumblr.com) for dealing with the entire process and [Neha](http://vancoons.tumblr.com) for giving me much needed critique and support.

John Watson lives in monochrome.  
The dusty and grainy kind that makes rain blend into the greyscale sky. 

The kind that bleaches plain linen bedspread until it is waxen white and dyes coffee that overflows from the brim of stained ashen mugs like leaks of midnight ink.

Sheaves of type-filled paper fall from his new slate colored desk in his new pasty grey streaked flat that he doesn’t bother to pick up anymore. The only thing he kept from _before_ was that old sunken skull, placed on the windowsill with its gaunt eyeholes facing away to stare out at the colorless London street.

It’s plain. It’s normal. Boring. Every moment of his consciousness is painful.

John Watson dreams in brilliant, vivid color. 

It comes in messy, unsequential flashes. Scenes appear, drenched and dripping with the spectrum that he lacks throughout daily life. The moment he lays his feathery blonde hair into his pillow and closes his eyes, it starts.

Green is first. Green is always first.

Green is the lazy rolling Dartmoor grass, traveling far beyond the horizon. He is sitting in the passenger side seat of the Land Rover, anxiously tapping his fingers against the worn grey leather. Sherlock is driving. What a bizarre case, a hound. In the mind’s eye it’s a ridiculous prospect, but with him everything is deducible. _You see but do not observe._

Occasionally John glances at Sherlock from the corner of his eyes as they both sit in silence. 

It’s the nice kind of contemplative silence that wraps around their shoulders like downy blankets. The kind of silence that swirls with possibilities and sharp intakes of breaths that could be filled with words of potential, followed by the shuddering exhale of lingering regret. 

John knows there’s something he wants to say. A feeling on the tip of his tongue that he recognized earlier. A feeling that could change everything if spilled from his lips with a simple parting and gravitational tilt.

If either of them notices this imbalance in equilibrium, they refuse to acknowledge it.

So they continue keeping their eyes forward while inhaling prospective importance and judgments and fears that neither would’ve dreamed to possess. 

Then purple.

Purple is a distraction. Admittedly not unwanted, but he would never consider that. (But didn’t he? Didn’t he think that he loved him? Didn’t he touch his lips to his before?) 

Purple is the deep silk of Sherlock’s favorite shirt. The one that he knows slides past ivory skin, outlined by spidery veins that draw life in, around, through him. 

Purple is the color that skims under his fingers the very first time they truly touch as more than colleagues. More than friends. Of course John considered it. It was inevitable because it was _him._

John never doubts it is women he prefers, but there is only ever one human being that he can love with the same intensity and the same violet tinged passion as Sherlock Holmes. 

So of course it comes and it happens and it is glorious like pinpoints of lights and then it never ends, not until his world becomes drained of color.

Yellow he would never forget.

Yellow is the pastry that he watches pass by Sherlock’s cupid bow lips in the washed out linoleum light of the kitchen. The fact that he is able to coax it into him during a case is a feat to be proud of, but John feels for the first time that wants more. 

The flakes of pastry are caught on the corner of Sherlock’s mouth as John drags his eyes longingly across to the other corner. He feels a stirring deep beneath his chest and it’s powerful and raw and hungry with _need._

John knows he is staring and he knows that Sherlock knows he is staring and that his rapid mind is deducing but before he can even think his actions through he pushes himself off of his seat and presses his lips to Sherlock’s. 

They are both open eyed, his rapidly moving and observing and John’s tentatively sliding closed before he gently swipes his tongue across Sherlock’s lips and it tastes slippery buttery sweet like a hint of his long forgotten childhood hidden behind the endless yellow desert of war. 

And then Sherlock is kissing him back and opening his mouth, inviting him in and their tongues are fighting against each other with ache and honeyed sweetness that sets flutters through his heart and lungs. 

Until the shrill scream of the teakettle cuts through the moment like a knife through waxy butter and Sherlock pulls back with a puff of breath to rise and tend to the to the water. 

John avoids his eyes as the feelings pound footsteps through him. Was it right? Was it too spontaneous? Was it his first? He shuts his eyes closed and all he sees are flashing yellow stars connected by golden spun strands, dancing along the darkness all saying it was beautiful, it was beautiful, and it doesn’t matter because it was worth it. And he knows it is all right when he feels a steady hand on his shoulder and a steaming cup placed in front of him, gifted with a flash of a smile.

Blue are his eyes. 

Not necessarily deep blue, but the kind that has been washed with gentle hands and hung out to dry in a warm afternoon. 

It is simple, his eyes. They see, they deduce, they consult. 

But the way John sees them are the heated stares where he rapidly counts the flecks of green and yellow that surround his pupils. He remembers the rare flashes of light within them, crinkling in the corners with humor. He has memorized the way they momentarily showed compassion, or maybe sadness, before hardening again. 

Blue is the last color he sees before he closes his eyes and surrenders himself to just _feeling._

No more time to observe, Sherlock. _Discover me._

Orange comes slowly, bleeding through close-eyed vision.

The crime scene by the Thames is awash with tangerine light. It bathes the dirty water with a coat of golden ocher that varies in shades with the lapping waves.

It is sunset. John never thinks that he would enjoy the setting globe with a murdered body as much as he does at that moment, with Sherlock.

The entire team has left because Sherlock has dismissed them. It is typical and stubborn and ridiculous but expected out of this man.

This man. John doesn’t know what to think about this man he has known for merely a couple months. Why does he refuse to turn away and instead decide to trust him?

Sherlock calls his name and John turns. Turns towards him, of course.

He is startled.

_Sherlock is beautiful._

The melting orange sky casts light upon his hollow cheeks and sets auburn into his tangled curls.

_He is beautiful._

Sherlock is firing off deductions and observing what no human could possibly detect all the while glancing up at John with that unconventional face and mind, offering himself to John as an open book only John only for John and that is when John realizes.

_He is brilliant and beautiful and I think that I may love him._

The overflowing orange sunlight is brimming over the edges of his vision but all he see is warmth and gold and Sherlock, only ever Sherlock now.

His dream spectrum ends in red. Red is last. Red always comes last.

Red is the end. The fall. The hero’s last speech. The lover’s final kiss goodbye.  
It is brilliant and tinged with scarlet as the scene happens and rewinds over and over. 

“Keep your eyes fixed on me.”  
 _They always have been, Sherlock. From the moment I met you, I was magnetized._

“Please, will you do this for me?”  
 _Anything, anything for you._

“Goodbye, John.”  
 _No, you promised me always you promised me forever you promised me you **promised** me._

He wants to scream and clench his fists until his fingernails draw bloody crescent moons within his palm. He wants to be next to him with their shoulders brushing and his lips against his ear saying, “If you jump, I’ll jump.” He wants to look into that beautiful, beautiful brain and crawl inside of the brilliant mind and lay there until all his secrets were his to fold between pockets and leave beneath yellow crime scene tape.

“Goodbye, John.”

Again and again he lies on the ground with bloodied lips and sightless eyes. Red layered on red, the color of destruction and the color of desperate endings.

“John.”

He is falling and they are both falling to the hard concrete spotted with red, expecting more and now expecting less out of everything that has been willingly thrust upon them.

“John.”

A desperate shake of his shoulders and the red drains away until he slowly, reluctantly peels his eyes to enter the lackluster world without him again.

“John.”

He lifts his sleep filled gaze.

White. All he can see is pure white light filled curls and cheekbones with porcelain skin and supple lips that say his name again and again, calling him awake with a flurry of coat and light he sees white and white and light until he realizes it isn’t a dream and he’s being blinded in the most brilliant way.

He parts his lips.

“Sherlock.”

**Author's Note:**

> Chronological order of events (this was originally for myself, but I think it would be good for you guys to clear up any confusion):  
> Orange is first. Orange is the moment John realizes he may love Sherlock.  
> Then it's green. Green is John contemplating whether he wants to do anything about it now.  
> Yellow is next. Yellow is when John finally kisses Sherlock.  
> And then purple. When they (bluntly speaking) do something sexual.  
> Then blue. His eyes have become so familiar to John and it's the last thing he looks at before surrendering himself to Sherlock.  
> And red. Red is the fall. Death. The end.  
> Finally, white. White because it's brilliant and pure and beautiful and Sherlock is back.


End file.
